lly in his hand and been able to conquer it.
And she felt that Castle Lashcairn was not big enough to hold all the
kindliness and happiness that seemed to be focussing upon it from all
the round horizon. Faith in the logical inevitability of good had
changed to certainty: it seemed to her, now, that faith was only an old
coward afraid to face fact. She was looking at the world from her
mountaintop that night; it seemed to her that it could never be the same
again for anyone in it, since she herself felt so different, so exalted.

The next two days brought complications. When Louis, coming in at noon,
all smelling of sunshine and wind and smoke, kneeled beside the bed for
a moment and, peeping underneath the folded sheet at the pink,
screwed-up face of his son, happened to touch her breast with his hand,
she was bathed in a sea of pain. Later in the day Mrs. Twist said he
would have to go to the township to get a feeding-bottle for the baby;
he was inclined to dispute the necessity for it, but he set off at once,
for the child, fed with sugar and water in a spoon, kept up a
dissatisfied wailing. Marcella forgot to be anxious about him, so
completely had she sponged fear from her mind. When, at breakfast-time
next morning, Jerry came in with the bottle, she guessed that Louis was
washing off the dust of his swift travel before he came to see her. In
the absorption of feeding the child and talking to Mrs. Twist she almost
forgot him; it was nightfall next day before she saw him, and then he
looked haggard and pinched, and she was almost frantic with fear; when
he was away from her she never thought he was drunk; always she thought
he had met with an accident. He told her, between sobs and writhings,
that once again he had failed, but he had been too ashamed to come to
her until he had slept off some of the traces of his failure. Seeing him
buying a baby's bottle at the store the men of the township had chaffed
him into "wetting the baby's head," and he had forgotten his recent
victory, his adoring love, his fierce resolves, and the little hungry
thing waiting to be fed. Once again she felt stunned, incredulous;
later, when she was up again and going about the cottage and Homestead,
she determinedly forgot. His passionate struggles made it impossible to
feel resentment against him, however much he made her suffer. Always she
was sure this particular time was the last time; always she thought
Louis, like Andrew, had been goin